Alrighty, perhaps the first thing you noticed in this blog entry was the diagram of Japanese alphabet letters. It's called "Hiragana" if you didn't know, and represents the basic sounds of Japanese word construction. There you go, free Japanese lessons too!

There's a great aspect to this diagram which vocalists can use if they want to try new warm up exercises and develop their phonetics. Apparently some Japanese vocalists warm up using the different consonant/vowel sounds you can see demonstrated in this chart. It's from our Japanese language lessons, btw. In much the same way that a western vocalist (for want of a better expression) uses "Do, re, mi..." to warm up Japanese vocalists do something similar usings "ka, ki, ku, ke,..."

Now, we're not going to pretend we have a mastery of this concept but two valid ideas come quickly to mind. The first is, as mentioned above, try progressing horizontally or vertically through this chart going through vocal exercise scales. You know, that sounds like a lot of fun!

Or, pick just one sound and run through a scale using that one sound only. Guess what? We just tried that idea using "shi". Nothing like throwing yourself in the deep end for a challenge, right. Well, what can we say but "tanoshi"! Which is Japanese for "fun/enjoy".

Rockbadger Productions

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Rockbadger holds a Bachelor of Creative Arts - specializing in Digital Media and Music Composition. Moving from the independent arena Rockbadger now brings his talents and skills to you to help you get the most for your marketing, promotional and event needs.